Here’s an Arizona story, the first ascent of Mt. Señala on April 11, 1960. The project was the brainchild of Don Myers, a PhD candidate in Chemistry at UCLA. Don had seen Mt. Señala from afar on an earlier trip to Havasu Falls. The peak sits on a bench of the Kaibab plateau out of Havasu Canyon. Three earlier attempts had been made by Bruin (UCLA) Mountaineers, but none had reached the peak itself. The land is cut by canyons, steep and difficult to navigate. Leaving nothing to chance, Don had aerial photographs of the area and we planned our route using a desk top stereoscope. We found out that it was nothing like being on the ground. At the final hour four of us from UCLA were in the project, Don, Mike Sherrick of the first ascent of Half Dome, Jim Wilkerson and me.

We drove out to Arizona and parked on the rim. It’s downhill into the Havasu village near the falls, and in those days only accessible by foot and hoof, so we backpacked down. It was known that a store existed in the village, so I didn’t over pack on food. That was a bad idea as things were expensive and of low quality. I got a can of tuna and it had a lot of bones in it. That never happened to me before or since. Life on the res.

To reach Mt. Señala we had to get out of the canyon. Don knew the way from previous attempts, up a steep area of broken cliffs. The crux was a section made by the Indians with holds chipped out of the sandstone. We went out of the canyon thinking it would be a one day trip to get to the peak and back, so we only carried climbing gear, water and a little food.

The rest is more or less on the following pages of the Bruin Mountaineers sheets.

One item needs explanation, Mike Sherrick’s injured finger. Being intelligent young men at a good university, of course we acted like yahoos when we found no trace of anyone having been on the summit before us. The yahoo instinct is, of course, to build a cairn. Mike still had his hand on the rock he was placing when Jim plopped one on top. Mike’s finger looked pretty bad, but in those days all you could do was hike it out and drive to the University for your Free Medical Care. Apparently we were so concerned about Mike that we stayed a day and went swimming.

Always sort of cracked me up that we would pack up all our stuff and go running over to Joshua Tree for Thanksgiving, only to freeze our asses off and climb very little (at least before this global warming thing got going good). The warmest climbing in the country was back home in AZ. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Steve - The Bruin Mountaineers were more a peak bagging group until Bob Kamps arrived on scene joined by Dave Harvey, an older friend of mine from East Bakersfield High. Then I came along and was gung ho for the sport, too. Dave faded, but we did a lot of things together.

The other attempts at Senyala may have faltered in crossing the terrain to get to the peak, or it was just more enjoyable to sit in the warm waters of the Havasu Creek than wander in a snake and cactus infested landscape.

Wilkerson had an encounter with what was called "jumping cactus". It had such thin spines with little hooks on the end that you didn't think you would get stuck, then you feel it and involuntarily pull your hand away and it seems like the cactus jumps at you. Of course Jim was the one who asked why it was called jumping cactus after we warned him, and with a recoil and exclamation said "It jumped!" Now you know why...

I sometimes wonder what happened to some of the characters I encountered. On the web I see a James A. Wilkerson became a mountaineering health expert after being an Emergency Room doctor at UCLA. He wrote a lot of books. Was that the same Jim who squashed Sherrick's finger?

The next photo is of the gods of the indians (at least that's why they said we oughtn't climb them).